Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/714

694 upon him. He went overland from Havana to Cienéga de Zapata (Zapata Swamp), thence to Caimanera and Cienfuegos. In September he passed through Trinidad, San Juan de Letran, Güinia de Soto, Araca with its great marsh, and other places, all of which were closely and attentively examined.

On the 22d of February of the following year he started from Casilda toward Manzanillo, thence to Bayamo, where he was entertained with true Cuban hospitality. Drawn by an irresistible desire to acquire more specimens of a very interesting mammal known locally as tejón, called almiqui by Poey and his successors, and scientifically named Solenodon cubanus (Peters), he traversed the Sierra Maestra. Another mammal, the Jutia andaráz (Capromys melanurus, Poey), of which he had obtained specimens from Dr. Yero, also attracted him thither. Besides having specimens of these species, he desired to trace them to their homes and follow them to their burrows, but his success was prevented by natural obstacles which he could not overcome. With the Yero brothers he went to Guisa, where he found in one of the caverns the interesting bat Monophyllus Redmanni, and many specimens of mollusks. Reaching Santiago de Cuba in December, 1857, he closely investigated its vicinity. He revisited Cabo de Cruz in April, 1858, in search of the tropical bird Phaëthon flavirostrus—called in Cuba rabijunco, from the two median rectrices that gracefully prolong its tail—which disappears from the place in the latter part of August or beginning of September and returns in February, and obtained very good specimens of it. In June of the same year he visited Caimanera, in the harbor of Guantánamo, for mollusks. At Zateras, in 1859, he met the botanist Charles Wright, of Connecticut, who had already collected a number of plants for Harvard University and had returned for new finds. The two explored in company, mutually aiding each other; and Wright acquired snails and insects and bird skins for the Smithsonian Institution, in return for which Gundlach had seeds and specimens of plants to send to Havana. He returned to Santiago de Cuba; visited Baracoa in May, where he went to the "Marianna" estate to see the famous branching palm; ascended the mountain called Yunque de Baracoa (Baracoa Anvil), where he discovered a number of insects and new species of mollusks; and went on by way of Gibara to Nuevitas, whence he passed to Puerto Principe, and finally arrived in Havana in August, 1859, three years and three months after his departure on the expedition.

Established again in the Cuban capital, Gundlach occupied himself with the systematic compilation of his collections. He described and published three new species of birds; sent the reptiles to Dr. Peters, of Berlin, for classification, and the land